curiouswombat | What I Did On My Holidays

This post is almost entirely dress related. There are some pictures of the exhibition of dresses belonging to The Queen, Princess Margaret, and Dead Di, and also a few of some older dresses.

Those of you who were at Writerconuk in Coventry might be a bit bemused when I tell you that one of the dresses made me think of

huntingospray and her talk on hard costuming - but when you see it you'll understand!

Firstly a couple of dresses from the late eighteenth century -

This is a dress from the period of George 3rd and Queen Charlotte -

And this is a clearer picture of the royal herald's robe you can see beside it -

And this is a dress of a type known as a mantua - a court dress of the mid eighteenth century. I have to say my first thought was that it would make the wearer look like a giant tea-cosy!

My second thought was of

huntingospray. Why? Just imagine trying to walk through a door in it...

Ah - the secret is revealed when you go to the side view -

You would have to approach all doors sideways on.

Now to another part of the palace - this is Queen Victoria's wedding dress -

She really was tiny - we decided she could only have been about five feet tall.

There was also a pair of silk stockings worn with it - and a quote from her diary telling how dear, dear, Albert helped her roll her stockings up her legs the next morning...

And now to the more recent dresses.

These first two pictures are of formal dresses made especially for the queen in the 1950s and 60s -

She had a very neat waist! Those were not all purely evening wear, either - the front one in the second picture was worn at the opening of the New Zealand Parliament in 1963.

The ivory dress with the interesting back in folds of ivory and green was worn for a state visit to Pakistan in 1961 - whose national colours are green and white. The front of the bodice of that dress is totally plain - because she would wear a broad green sash from shoulder to waist bearing the jewelled insignia of the Order of Pakistan. Clever, eh?

Dresses belonging to Princess Margaret were used to show firstly that her different role allowed her to follow fashion a little more, and even lead it just as her niece-in-law did later - and also how fashions changed during the 1960s - 70s. To be honest most of her dresses and coats on show were fairly boring to me - there were fur coats rather like one my mum got in a rummage sale, and a couple of melton cloth coats that I had cheap copies of myself, and so on!! You can see one in the background of this next picture.

But I was really happy with this picture of a 'fancy dress' outfit she wore to a party, because I managed to get reflected images of the princess herself in it -

The other thing her dresses showed was that, although she was also tiny and slim to start with, there was definitely some very careful tailoring as she approached middle age, to allow for a good deal of middle-age spread!

Then into the third display - dresses worn by the Princess of Wales in the 1980s and 90s.

This red one is rather interesting - it was designed by Bruce Oldfield for a visit to Saudi Arabia and basically covered her from neck to toes - but it still very glamorous -

And there were also two beautiful blue dresses embroidered with stars - same theme but very different dresses -

D-d rather liked the front one of these - and we both thought that it was, on the whole, a much better style than the other one, (worn during a visit to Italy in 1985) although the velvet is lovely, the power-dressing shoulders and the drop waist might have been very in at the time but looked at now d-d and I decided it didn't really do much for the princess!

There was also a single shouldered white dress and a rather droopy pink number by Zandra Rhodes - but I couldn't get a clear shot of them - and I didn't think much of them either, to be honest!

So - that is the end of the dress post. But I'm warning you - I took my camera to the V&A on Thursday...